Carl Perkins

Carl Lee Perkins (April 9, 1932 – January 19, 1998) was an American country and rockabilly guitarist, singer and songwriter. A rockabilly great and pioneer of rock and roll, he began his recording career at the Sun Studio in Memphis in 1954. Among his best known songs are "Blue Suede Shoes", "Honey Don't", "Matchbox" and "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby".

According to fellow musician Charlie Daniels, "Carl Perkins' songs personified the rockabilly era, and Carl Perkins' sound personifies the rockabilly sound more so than anybody involved in it, because he never changed". Perkins's songs were recorded by artists (and friends) as influential as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Ricky Nelson, and Eric Clapton, which further cemented his prominent place in the history of popular music.

Nicknamed the "King of Rockabilly", Perkins was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. His recording of "Blue Suede Shoes" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Carl Lee Perkins was born on April 9, 1932, in Tiptonville, Tennessee, the son of poor sharecroppers Louise and Buck Perkins (misspelled on his birth certificate as "Perkings"). He had two brothers, Jay and Clayton. From the age of six, he worked long hours in the cotton fields with his family whether school was in session or not. The boys grew up hearing Southern gospel music sung by white friends in church and by black field workers and sharecroppers in the cotton fields. On Saturday nights Perkins would listen to the Grand Ole Opry, broadcast from Nashville on his father's radio.

Roy Acuff's broadcasts from the Opry inspired Perkins to ask his parents for a guitar. Since they could not afford to buy one, his father made one from a cigar box and a broomstick. Eventually, a neighbor sold his father a worn-out Gene Autry guitar. Perkins could not afford new strings, and when they broke, he had to retie them. The knots cut his fingers when he would slide to another note, so he began bending the notes, stumbling onto a type of blue note.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.